Thursday, June 08, 2006

Last night I made pancakes to give the class during the animation screenings, as a way to defuse the works I thought of as overly serious. I didn't know how to make them, and although they were edible enough, they sat in my stomach like paste and made me feel awful until I crapped and did some sit-ups.

The cartoon I made remains flawed, even following it's showing to the class, in its compromised form. I want to get it into fighting shape, because as it stands, I'm not sure whether it's good or not. Certainly I couldn't tell from the class's reaction.

And I've got to produce a ton of writing tomorrow, all reflecting on this class. I wrote a draft of a self-evaluation, but I've still got to rewrite this eight-page essay in a more academic form.

My obsession with the whole Paper Rad scene continues. I'm really fascinated by Dan Nadel and Picturebox, the people who released the book, as well as- Well, if you clicked the link, you'd see. Arty comics mostly, but also stuff like the Wilco book and the new Black Dice book. Fascinating. Dan Nadel is a guy with really weird and distinct tastes, that fascinate me because I get an impression of where he's coming from even if I have enthusiasms that he doesn't share at all. He's really into Mark Newgarden, who I recently read a good interview with. He's doing a new magazine, to be published by Lime Publishing, the same people that put out Arthur, and distributed for free. This is exciting to me.This Bookslut interview with Salvador Plascencia informs me that a paperback version of The People Of Paper will soon exist. It kind of saddens me that I bought the hardcover, but I'd like to remind people that that book is really good, and maybe were you to read it in softcover, you'd enjoy it. The thing I like about that interview is just a little aside about what he learned from George Saunders, about the advice to be softer. It's something I agree with, and something that, secrets being told here now, makes me feel superior in my writing to this guy I had in a class whose literary heroes are William S. Burroughs, Hunter S. Thompson, and Chuck Palahniuk. And that's a guy I liked, who I think is smart, but whose fiction actually struck me as unreadable for it coming off as adolescent in its use of profanity right at the start.